Welding and soldering form strong bonds that conduct electricity and heat, but they require high temperatures that can be dangerous to both people and equipment. A new company called MesoGlue claims that its eponymous metallic glue has all the advantages of welding and soldering but with the ease of use of polymer adhesives.

Image from Advanced Materials & Processes, January 2016 (pdf)

MesoGlue is made of metallic nanorods that are spaced just right such that a pair of coatings can lock into each other. It has two types: one made of silver and another made of copper “with other metals.” The latter can fuse objects together with very little pressure, like ordinary glues. The silver MesoGlue on the other hand needs a higher pressure to fuse without gaps, but the resulting bond has a higher electrical and thermal conductivity than the copper alloy MesoGlue.

I know that the concept of nanomaterials is hard to grasp, but that intro video is oversimplified and didn’t show the product itself. It doesn’t help that the company has no other demo videos as of this writing. That said, MesoGlue says it’s willing to demonstrate its wonder glue and join nearly any flat surface, but only at their facility.

[via Northeastern University via Motherboard]